Teachers vote to keep censured executive

Press, 23 June 1978, Page 1

Teachers vote to keep censured executive

Canterbury secondary teachers voted yesterday to censure the executive of the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association for lack of leadership, but rejected a call for the resignation of the national president and executive.

About 700 Canterbury members of the association spent more than two hours debating 20 branch remits yesterday afternoon. Dissatisfaction with the association’s recent pay negotiations was the recurrent theme. As well as voting to condemn—-but to accept—the recently negotiated agreement, the teachers moved to instruct the P.P.T.A.’s national executive to start new pay claims in eight days. The meeting also set

August 1 as the deadline for satisfactory progress on the new claims. If such progress were not made by then, bans on Examination administration should again be imposed, the meeting decided. Other decisions reached by the teachers included calls for the P.P.T.A. to change its negotiating team, to be prepared to use direct action, to obtain the help of an industrial lawyer and a public relations firm, and to keep members better posted on negotiations.

The principal of the Darfield High School (Mr R. 1. M. Ryburn) said that the Darfield P.P.T.A. branch’s plans to seek an injunction to halt the pay settlement would be abandoned. “A fair section” of the association’s membership would be disappointed by this news, he said. But a lawyer had said that there was no formal action that the teachers could seek an injunction against. Yesterday’s meeting was held outside normal school hours.